Tipton Poetry Journal #54 - Fall 2022 by Tipton Poetry Journal

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2022

Tipton Poetry Journal

Editor’s Note

Tipton Poetry Journal, located in the heartland of the Midwest, publishes quality poetry from Indiana and around the world.

Statistics: This issue features 39 poets from the United States (22 different states), and 4 poets from India, Italy, South Korea and Ukraine.

Our Featured Poem this issue is “Picking Up Steam,” written by Liz Dolan. Liz’s poem, which also receives an award of $25, can be found on page 3. The featured poem was chosen by the Board of Directors of Brick Street Poetry, Inc., the Indiana non-profit organization who publishes Tipton Poetry Journal.

Barry Harris reviews Ticker by Mark Neely.

Cover Photo: Harvest Time by Brendan Crowley.

Barry Harris, Editor

All rights remain the exclusive property of the individual contributors and may not be used without their permission.

Tipton Poetry Journal is published by Brick Street Poetry Inc., a tax-exempt non-profit organization under IRS Code 501(c)(3). Brick Street Poetry Inc. publishes the Tipton Poetry Journal, hosts the monthly poetry series Poetry on Brick Street and sponsors other poetry-related events.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2022

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2022 Contents Dan Carpenter ............................................................ 1 James Green .............................................................. 2 Liz Dolan ................................................................... 3 Bruce Robinson ......................................................... 4 Gene Twaronite ......................................................... 5 Philip C. Kolin ............................................................ 6 Thomas Alan Orr ....................................................... 8 Richard Schiffman ................................................... 10 Mykyta Ryzhykh ...................................................... 11 Timothy Pilgrim ....................................................... 12 Rosemary Freedman ................................................ 14 Hollie Dugas ............................................................. 15 Dave Malone ............................................................. 16 Bart Edelman ........................................................... 17 Karla Linn Merrifield .............................................. 20 Tara Menon .............................................................. 21 D.C. Buschmann ...................................................... 22 R L Swihart .............................................................. 23 Sophia Upshaw ........................................................ 24 Janelle Finamore ..................................................... 25 Bruce Levine ............................................................ 26 Paul Lojeski ............................................................. 27 Arvilla Fee ............................................................... 28 George Freek ........................................................... 29 Michelle Hartman ................................................... 30

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2022 Michael Lee Johnson ............................................... 32 Cameron Morse ....................................................... 33 Tawn Parent ............................................................ 34 Mark Vogel .............................................................. 36 Eugene Stevenson .................................................... 37 John Grey ................................................................ 38 Bruce Campbell ....................................................... 40 Ken Poyner .............................................................. 42 Nancy Huxtable Mohr ............................................. 43 Haro Lee .................................................................. 44 Katherine Hoerth .................................................... 45 Lynette Lamp .......................................................... 46 Alessio Zanelli ......................................................... 47 Kit Kennedy ............................................................. 48 Tia Paul-Louis ......................................................... 49 Ruth Holzer ............................................................. 50 Saraswati Nagpal ..................................................... 51 Brandon Hansen ..................................................... 52 Review: Ticker by Mark Neely .................................. 54 Contributor Biographies .......................................... 61

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2022

Blood DanCarpenter

Larry Smalls was a fighting man and sure as hell was built for it even now I'd kill for that body color of a bruise shape of a comic book superhero made not in any gym but down at the stockyards in the days they sent cows down a chute and black men brained them with sledgehammers

all day he'd do this work then he'd come home and fight but the muscle was wasted on those battles his fights were with City Hall, the Man, the System he took on police brutality with brute force of a voice unschooled, untrained raised to a quaint eloquence by rage over loved ones known and unknown herded, penned, branded and felled by detached deciders of their usefulness

some day, I figured, Larry might be among them for the moment, he swung his hammer no more conscious of some day than a child

Dan Carpenter has published poetry and fiction in Illuminations, Pearl, Poetry East, Southern Indiana Review, Maize, Flying Island, Pith, The Laurel Review, Sycamore Review, Prism International, Fiction, Hopewell Review and other journals. A collection of columns written for The Indianapolis Star, where he earned his living, was published by Indiana University Press in 1993 with the title Hard Pieces: Dan Carpenter’s Indiana. Dan has published two books of poems, The Art He’d Sell for Love (Cherry Grove, 2015) and More Than I Could See (Restoration, 2009); and two books of non-fiction.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2022 1

The Orionids JamesGreen

are lonely like the rest of us. They fall from Orion, that hapless hunter immortalized in the nightscape where he finds his final peace,

so I wake early and walk into darkness to pay homage, and I wait for his star-sparks to follow some tender urge. But now the sky is indifferent. Clouds of a nameless color

smear the southern horizon and I wonder what it means that I would come to this place in the steep of darkness for companionship, to meet a hero who hides in clouds.

Sitting on a lawn chair, under a blanket, hands cupping a mug of coffee, I notice clouds beginning to drift and the dog star peek into view, then disappear again.

I will comb the morning for metaphor.

James Green has worked as a naval officer, deputy sheriff, high school English teacher, professor of education, and administrator in both public schools and universities. Recipient of two Fulbright grants, he has served as a visiting scholar at the University of Limerick in Ireland and the National Chung Cheng University in Taiwan. In addition to academic publications, including three books, Green is the author of three chapbooks of poetry and a fourth, Long Journey Home, is forthcoming after winning the Charles Dickson Chapbook Contest sponsored by the Georgia Poetry Society., Individual poems have appeared in literary magazines in England, Ireland, and the United States. He resides in Muncie, Indiana.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2022 2

Picking Up Steam

LizDolan

My father was a car knocker, the handmaiden of the locomotive as it rested, sweated in Oak Point Yard, xx en route to Hartford and New Haven.

After his calloused fingers secured her pistons, bolts, and screws, he’d rap his iron wrench on her corrugated door signaling her safety to the engineer.

Royal, magisterial, her black-velvet flanks illuminated by the fat summer moon, she’d snort smoke, whistling her high soprano, Tirnagog kicking up pebbles, looping the American miles. And my father, an immigrant, ebonized by her grease, a part of it, a part of it, a part of it.

A nine time Pushcart nominee in both prose and poetry, Liz Dolan has published two poetry collections. Her ten grandchildren pepper her life. Liz lives in Rehobeth Beach, Delaware.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2022 3

Matters of Significant Portent BruceRobinson

Meanwhile, nobody's talking about the weather. Yes, there are plenty of books overdue at the library. Have you been to the grocery store recently? Prices are insane! Yes, I know there's a crisis somewhere overseas, but somewhere else doctors think they've discovered how to commiserate with a heretofore incurable disease. Don't let me forget

I slept through the super bowl's halftime show; let's not even talk about how much it costs to fill up the car; I know I'm upset each time I drive to the mall, but is it really all that big a deal? You know it's supposed to snow big-time tonight?

Recent work by Bruce Robinson appears or is forthcoming in Tar River Poetry, Spoon River, Rattle, Mantis, Two Hawks Quarterly, Peregrine, Tipton Poetry Journal, North Dakota Quarterly, and Aji.He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2022 4

Tracks in the Surf GeneTwaronite

Can you read this? Most days, my words look more like tracks of a sandpiper skittering along the edge of the sea. But I see them clearly now o blessed words! There’s so much I want to say before they leave me again and I must go back to that inarticulate cell, as memories play out like silent movies, and I must watch them speechless. Moving in and out on the stage, strange people arrive, imploring me to do things, uttering sounds and looking at me as if I’m supposed to understand them. They start off smiling, but then begin to frown. Their voices grow louder, and I can feel their frustration slowly rise in an angry wave. Why can’t you understand me? Don’t you remember? Sometimes they yell at me, and all I can do is babble. But I must hurry. The words are fleeting, and I must write while I can. So if you’re still here, please share this with that lady with the luminous face. She’s here every morning. When she smiles, she fills my every dark corner, and her words play softly on my soul. Sometimes she opens a book, and points to the tracks on the page as she speaks. And each night before I go to sleep, she sings to me a sad song that reminds of what I do not know. Please, tell her that I ….

Gene Twaronite is the author of four collections of poetry as well as the rhyming picture book How to Eat Breakfast. His first poetry book Trash Picker on Mars, published by Kelsay Books, was the winner of the 2017 New MexicoArizona Book Award for Arizona poetry. His newest poetry collection Shopping Cart Dreams will be published by Kelsay Books in 2022. Gene’s poems have been described as: “ranging from edgy to whimsical to inscrutable … playfully haunting and hauntingly playful.” A former New Englander, Gene now lives in Tucson. Follow more of his poetry at genetwaronite.poet.com or https://www.instagram.com/genetwaronitepoetry/.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2022 5

The Spanish Lady

PhilipC.Kolin

New York City, Winter 1918

We lived in a tenement where half the doors were draped with black crepe. Long coughing spells carried down the hallways, stoked by the coal-less chill. The city was saturated

with colds. Fines were issued for spitting on the sidewalk. Hearses trotted past our windows hour after hour. Nights we left the windows open to kill the germs.

Masked mail carriers looked like ghosts. The Spanish Lady killed more of our soldiers than the Germans had. We wore red because the flu didn't like that color,

and left slice onions out at night to keep from getting sick. We quaffed Pluto Water to wash out germs, even if it killed you. We too were on a death watch: our own.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2022 6

Monkey Grass

PhilipC.Kolin

She planted monkey grass all up and down her steep driveway each spring. It was her green menagerie.

Her plant keeper outfit included large swaths of sweat just underneath a large straw hat, the fringe extending into the cloudless sky surrounding her. She joked the grass marked the border between her house and heaven's gate.

It happily endured generations of kids' bikes, drivers and their hurrying, crushing tires, and the scorching Mississippi sun that tried to wilt it brown. But it survived many seasons because of her watering and pruning; it even stood

in a strong wind. But then she was gone, and relatives forgot the monkeys; but their drooping crowns looked like sad straw hats.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2022 7

Philip C. Kolin is the distinguished Professor of English Emeritus at the University of Southern Mississippi. He has published over 40 books including 14 collections of poetry, the most recent being Americorona (Wipf & Stock, 2021).

Roofer

ThomasAlanOrr

I ain’t first class but I ain’t white trash ~ Tom Petty

Pouring a shot of Jack into his beer, he has no use, he says, for a band without pedal steel and no time for women who haven’t read Steinbeck, with whom conversation is like carrying a bundle of shingles up a ladder in high heat.

He sometimes regrets his dilatory ways those hungover mornings that cost him more jobs than he cares to count, though when he works he keeps up with the Mexicans, who can lay ten squares each on a good day in blazing sun, his burnished skin as dark as theirs.

They call him Blanco y Negro. He banters with them in broken Spanish, sharing their simple fare of beans and rice and warm tortillas under the trees in August, attending baptisms and quinceañeras like the crazy tio everybody loves.

That day haunts him when he and Paco straddled the ridge line and Paco stood and suddenly pitched over, falling two stories to the ground. He sees Paco in his dreams, dancing fearlessly on the roof, reaching for the sky and laughing in the summer sun.

He wonders, if not for a two-beer buzz at lunch, could he have been quicker, grabbing Paco’s leg or arm in time?

As if to atone, on Día de los Muertos he makes the trip alone to the cemetery in Juarez to light a candle at the grave.

Roofers, he says, with a rueful smile, are closer to heaven than most a good thing given a trade that gets no respect until the rain is falling on your baby’s head and the roofers come and the world is safe again.

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Lazarus Jones Keeps a Butterfly in Winter

ThomasAlanOrr

On a warm September day she flew like summer’s last breath through an open window in the upstairs room where he kept Kia’s things –hairbrush on the dresser, a book of poems, framed picture of them together on a porch swing in a sweeter time.

He was in the seat of the old International, which croaked and spit before stalling in the yard. He muttered, gazed heavenward, and saw the Painted Lady let herself in. The night turned cold, the window closed. He put out a dish of juice and she drank deeply.

Fall gave way to winter and still she thrived. He named her Vanessa for the genus, Vanessa cardui, and watched her flitter about the room, colors bright – forewing olivescent, ochreous, brown –backwing transversely marbled – marvelous! How much, he wondered, can she know?

She was alone in her wildness, like Lazarus himself, twice alone, losing Kia, being the only black farmer in the township. He could have left, but farming was all he ever knew. And so he sought consolation in Vanessa’s company. She alit upon his arm, antennae stroking him.

In spring, the window open, she circled once around the room as if to say farewell and, like the Holy Ghost, touched his head before she fluttered free, diaphanous in a shaft of sunlight, as if inviting him to come forth into the newness of the world.

Thomas Alan Orr's most recent collection is Tongue to the Anvil: New and Selected Poems (Restoration Press). His work has appeared in numerous journals. He works for a community development organization in Indianapolis and lives on a small farm in Shelby County where he raises Flemish Giant rabbits.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2022 9

Encouraged RichardSchiffman

I spent the morning hiding in a thicket where you couldn’t find me even if you tried. True, that world-meanderer, the breeze, sniffed me out. But its lips are sealed.

When I spoke by rote my old man woes, the backlit gasses trembled with consternation. You are as green as you want to be, they insisted, you are our own two-legged emanation.

My legs are bowed, I told the crow that had the sky entire to fly through. Caw, caw, he said, you are not dead, you can take flight where you are sitting.

The sun concurred, it lit my face. It burned away my hang-dog resignation. I wore that light of day all day until my nightly assignation.

No need to fear the night, night told. For rest assured, the stars are also suns that light the way from dusk till dawn. They’ve got your back, be bold.

Richard Schiffman is an environmental reporter, poet and author of two biographies based in New York City. His poems have appeared on the BBC and on NPR as well as in Alaska Quarterly, New Ohio Review, Christian Science Monitor, New York Times, Writer’s Almanac, This American Life in Poetry, Verse Daily and other publications. His first poetry collection What the Dust Doesn't Know was published in 2017 by Salmon Poetry.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2022 10

Before-rain before-fear MykytaRyzhykh

Before-rain before-fear more than the skill before the heart Anabioses of lame handwriting in the notebook of phobias

Involuntarily the rituals of movements turn into a prayer book of memories

The constant of terrorist attacks of heart contractions Who will not wake up in the morning next time?

To whom did you extend your logos last night?

Multibillion-dollar humanity

Eons of yawning

Indifferent postcards of tears during the military occupation

a stone is a ruin

MykytaRyzhykh

a stone is a ruin again a stone is only a ruin

Revenge of madness

MykytaRyzhykh

Revenge of madness

Little gophers of construction in the palm of hopes

Guns screamed

The end of all roads We swam out to drown The only prospect is waiting

Mykyta Ryzhykh lives in Ukraine and was a finalist of the Crimean fig competition and 2022 Pushcart Nominee (Tipton Poetry Journal). Mykyta has been published in the journals White Mammoth, Soloneba, Littsentr, Plumbum Press, Ukrainian Literary Gazette, Bukovynskyi Journal, Stone Poetry Journal, Tipton Poetry Journal, Alternate route, dyst journal, Better than Starbucks poetry & Fiction Journal, Allegro Poetry Magazine, Littoral Press, Asorn haiku Journal, Book of Matches, Ice Floe Press.and Literary Chernihiv.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2022 11

Shadow burial

TimothyPilgrim

Horizon jagged near sundown, I stop tottered trek, find clearing, stream, make fire, camp.

With luck, I’ll outlast night. Squawk of jays in tree conjures back my boyhood life father of father, abuelo his memory flares, immerses me in what sowed hate. Not dismissive back of hand,

fast, hard, on pimpled face. Nor scorn sprayed for chores left undone, irreverent talk, refusal to pray.

More, ferity seen as I lay tall-grassed by willows lining bank of creek. Laddered, high, Abuelo reaches deep

through leaves, magpie nest, babies, beaks eager to eat one by one, strokes each a bit, rips tiny head off slim black neck. Blood-spurt memory beset fifty years hence, I namaste my wrinkled hands, breathe in, hum low to bury this shadow. I forgive him, then forget.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2022 12

Fear on the way out

TimothyPilgrim

FOMO, as some would text, short for Fear Of Missing Out, has little to do with differences, say, between prophet knowing the end is near and profit gained from a lottery win just before the denouement. It’s more a powerful form of worry perhaps about brooding whether one is a cuckolder of diminutive stature, giver of lesser heart-panged slights. Or, akin to Odysseus worrying if he should choose sirens over home. Certainly powerful enough to prompt any stable person to leave a perfectly good life at halftime.

Timothy Pilgrim, Montana native and Pacific Northwest poet, has a few hundred acceptances from U.S. journals such as Seattle Review, San Pedro River Review, Tipton Poetry Journal, and Santa Ana River Review, and international journals such as Windsor Review and Toasted Cheese in Canada, Prole Press in the United Kingdom, and Otoliths in Australia. He is the author of Seduced by metaphor (2021).

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2022 13

To all the people who love wildflowers

RosemaryFreedman

If I were to tell you that joshua trees write poems about the shadows made by the rose frost of your cheeks the color of zinnias. Your crooked smile is a welcome that invites the sun through a door of darkness. An owl lands at your feet, pulling at the hem of your pants. All the bright colors are like fireworks on an ordinary day. Indigo baptista, New England Aster, Queen Anne’s lace, bachelor buttons. Redbuckia the gold petals glow like lightening bugs, like masa. If you wait for the rain long enough, the wildflowers will rise like the voices of children at their first holiday pageant.

Rosemary Freedman is a poet, a painter and an advanced practice nurse. She has 7 children and lives in Noblesville, Indiana with her husband Jack. Rosemary enjoys growing peonies and tending her large garden. She is a graduate of Indiana University. Rosemary is currently working toward her masters of fine arts in poetry at Butler University.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2022 14

13 Life Lessons from Holden Caufield HollieDugas

1. Song lyrics are better when you mishear them.

2. There isn’t a catcher’s mitt in the world big enough.

3. Nobody ever got nowhere without a void.

4. Who wants flowers when they’re dead?

5. Stuff you’d rather not say is always the stuff worth saying.

6. A red hunting hat will intimidate the dickens out of people.

7. This world is full of creeps and morons.

8. This planet is godforsaken; romanticize everything.

9. Nothing’s ever all true.

10. Laugh like the dickens whenever you can.

11. Trouble is, no one will ever truly hear you.

12. I don’t know what I mean by that but I mean it.

13. Did I tell you about the ducks, yet?

Hollie Dugas lives in New Mexico. Her work has been selected to be included in Barrow Street, Reed Magazine, Crab Creek Review, Redivider, Porter House Review, Pembroke, Salamander, Poet Lore, Watershed Review, Mud Season Review, Little Patuxent Review, The Louisville Review, The Penn Review, Chiron Review, Louisiana Literature, and CALYX. Most recently, her poem was selected as winner of the 22nd Annual Lois Cranston Memorial Poetry Prize at CALYX, in addition to, the 2022 Heartwood Poetry Prize. Hollie has been a finalist twice for the Peseroff Prize at Breakwater Review, Greg Grummer Poetry Prize at Phoebe, Fugue’s Annual Contest, and has received Honorable Mention in Broad River Review. Additionally, “A Woman’s Confession #5,162” was selected as the winner of Western Humanities Review Mountain West Writers’ Contest (2017). Recently, Hollie has been nominated for a 2020 Pushcart Prize and for inclusion in Best New Poets 2021. She is currently a member on the editorial board for Off the Coast.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2022 15

Autumn Float

DaveMalone

We make the gravel bar before dusk. Our kayaks groan with as much wearied muscle as our own. Fire is first, and driftwood disappears in air as blue flame then ash.

We decide against tents, those nylon slivers made to resist evening wind and rain. We would rather face the flood of stars above the bluff.

After fish and scotch and fire, sleeping bags form around us while we chat then stop because the river shares a secret

in a low constant whoosh that hushes owl and coyote, and ushers us into the arms of slumber.

Poet and filmmaker Dave Malone lives in the Missouri Ozarks. His latest poetry volume is Tornado Drill (Aldrich Press, 2022), and his poems have appeared in Plainsongs, San Pedro River Review, and Delta Poetry Review. He can be found online at davemalone.net or via Instagram @dave.malone.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2022 16

The Tunnel of Love BartEdelman

Born in The Tunnel of Love Palisades Amusement Park, July, 1961.

Mother did not wait for ride’s end, Dispensing me by darkness, On the metal floor of the car, Before I could witness light. The event made national headlines Caused quite a stir in the family, Since Father ran off, hours later, With a woman who swallowed swords, And refused to take no for an answer. I reveal this tidbit of information, Merely as historical fact alone.

My sudden entrance into calamity, Came at a costly price

An admission ticket I’ve yet to cash, If I could only gauge its worth. That I find I’m constantly drawn To tight quarters and little space, Should arrive without surprise. I’m far more comfortable in places Where others squeal or scream Unsure of the destination ahead. This, then, is cargo I carry; Safe passage through a curious life.

The Deed

No mention of the deed made, The entire family did its dance

Over, around, and under it As if a prize would be awarded To the relative who safely skirted The issue for an additional year. Surely, Aunt Betty ruled the roost. Uncle Cliff came prepared with a joke. Cousin Moe curled up beside the cat,

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2022 17

BartEdelman

And Grandpa Ben decided nothing mattered, Except his devotion to the Cardinals

Despite their ten-game losing streak.

My mother and father, not to be outdone, Played gin rummy outside on the veranda, Drinking quite a few banana daiquiris, And my sister, Bree, spent an hour or two Removing all the pickles from a giant jar, Before replacing them back again

For some particularly unknown reason Being, of course, part of her condition.

By the time dinner was served, Uncle Archie had already departed Due to a sudden case of the flu And Aunt Lydia realized she needed to bathe, Come hell or high water, she said. We consumed what there was of the turkey, In far less than half an hour, Escaping yet another holiday None the wiser, nor any more deficient. Later, Bree fell asleep on my shoulder, In the backseat of the car, halfway home. Mother and Father spoke in hushed voices But loud enough, finally, to mention, Wasn’t it great to see everyone again? I wanted to ask about Dad’s brother, Doug The guy who robbed the bank outside Detroit And is stuck in some jail who knows where. However, I knew it was probably a bad idea And would hurt Dad more than I thought. Yeah, fun to see the gang, I replied, Simply leaving it at that. Besides, I guess, if I really do want to know More about the deed from anyone else, Thanksgiving is only a year away.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2022

The Midway BartEdelman

I’ve tried to find the Midway Quite a few times now But to no avail, I’m afraid. It simply evades me, at all cost, Despite the map I carry In the chest pocket of my shirt, Directing me to the very spot Where the hoopla should occur.

I imagine I must be half the distance Between the place I began And the final stop on the line Yet no exact measurement exists. Oddly enough, I remain in limbo, Going both forward and backward, Making an appraisal of my situation A precarious and foolish call.

If I could only reach the Midway With its amusements and concessions galore This journey would have a purpose; I might require little more. Perhaps, what I thought was an end, May well be dawn’s disguise. And when the sideshow barker beckons, I’ll take a step inside.

Bart Edelman’s poetry collections include Crossing the Hackensack (Prometheus Press), Under Damaris’ Dress (Lightning Publications), The Alphabet of Love (Red Hen Press), The Gentle Man (Red Hen Press), The Last Mojito (Red Hen Press), The Geographer’s Wife (Red Hen Press), and Whistling to Trick the Wind (Meadowlark Press). He has taught at Glendale College, where he edited Eclipse, a literary journal, and, most recently, in the MFA program at Antioch University, Los Angeles. His work has been widely anthologized in textbooks. He lives in Pasadena, California.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2022 19

Life After KarlaLinnMerrifield

He’ll never know a change has come over me. I can’t show him the latest little heartache, latest minor disappointment. He’s beyond lines badly broken. Dead poets pass no pipe, dead poets hear no word. So he no longer reads how I’ve written of him posthumously in lisping poems to mourn the disintegrated muse. Imperfectly garner again a few particular molecules of that idiosyncratic Georgia beau.

Etowah River ceases to flow with old souls. The paddle is still.

Karla Linn Merrifield has 16 books to her credit. Her newest poetry collection, My Body the Guitar, recently nominated for the National Book Award, was inspired by famous guitarists and their guitars and published in December 2021 by Before Your Quiet Eyes Publications Holograph Series (Rochester, NY). She is a frequent contributor to The Songs of Eretz Poetry Review. Web site: https://www.karlalinnmerrifield.org/; blog at https://karlalinnmerrifeld.wordpress.com/; Tweet @LinnMerrifiel; https://www.facebook.com/karlalinn.merrifield.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2022 20

Contemplating the Crescent

TaraMenon

The crescent moon is a fuzzy fruit like the furry peach on my quartz counter.

If I say a mantra for Hanuman, it will be within my grasp.

It will taste like ambrosia. The memory forever tingling on my tongue and mouth.

The earth will be dark for an eternity. The studded sky will miss the smile that lit up our species and soon we will wither and die.

One person’s rapaciousness extinguishing life. Better the peach within my reach.

Tara Menon is an Indian-American writer based in Lexington, Massachusetts. Her latest fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in The Hong Kong Review, Litro, The Bookends Review, Rio Grande Review, and The Evening Street Review. Her most recent poems have been published or are forthcoming in Arlington Literary Journal, Global South, San Pedro River Review, The Loch Raven Review, and The Tiger Moth Review. She is also a book reviewer and essayist whose pieces have appeared in many journals.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2022 21

Now That Hay Fever Season Has Passed D.C.Buschmann

I like to feel the heat bear down on my face in late fall as the breeze cools and gentles my arms while I walk a mile or two with my neighbor.

I like to roll my tongue over a Tootsie Roll, smash it with my teeth, taste the burst of satisfaction while I read.

I like the soothing view on my patio of vincas and marigolds nourished by rainwater collected in the big blue bowl bought years ago.

I don't like mind-jolting racket made by lawnmowers, edging equipment, tree extractors, or root grinders.

I prefer to sit in my wicker chair, absorb nature's notes and tones, watch two senior dogs chase squirrels and decipher canine codes in the grass while I attempt to simply take a moment.

D.C. Buschmann is a retired editor and reading specialist. Her poem, “Death Comes for a Friend,” was the Editor’s Choice in Poetry Quarterly, Winter 2018. Her work has been published in many journals including Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library’s So it Goes Literary Journal, The Adirondack Review, Tipton Poetry Journal, and Red Coyote. She lives in Carmel, Indiana with husband Nick and miniature schnauzers Cupcake and Coco. Her first poetry collection, Nature: Human and Otherwise, was published in February 2021.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2022 22

Writer’s Block RLSwihart

I didn’t write a poem for over a week

A close friend died. Someone I only knew from a distance died, but he temporarily resurrected two beautiful souls

I flew here and drove there, always listening to the subtle rhythms of the engine

I waited for the sun to come out. I waited for the rain to stop

Instead of writing a poem I wrote condolences

I wrote a note to a shut-in about the parade

I booked a room near Shelter Valley and scribbled plans about my visit

I rolled out of bed (but it was your alarm). Showered first. Left imprints on two eyelids refusing to wake

R L Swihart was born in Michigan but now resides in Long Beach California. His work has sparsely dotted both the Net and hardcopy literary journals (Cordite, Pif Magazine, The Literary Bohemian, Offcourse, Otoliths, Denver Quarterly, Quadrant Magazine, The Bookends Review). His third book of poetry was released July 2020: Woodhenge

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2022 23

Self Portrait as a Record Needle

SophiaUpshaw

I come home from work, a red pail overflowing with words, eager to make sandcastles out of sentences. I unclasp my bra & toss it on the armchair, eat my black bean burger with a fork & knife, and set tea lights ablaze. I place my gilded Goodwill candelabra on the window sill, a reverse SOS signal to show the world, or at least the dog walkers, that tonight, I’m more than okay, that all that’s missing is a bubble bath – the aroma of lavender stems tied to sandalwood softening my shoulder blades, Chet Baker spinning in vinyl circles. He pins his love to his lapel and I soften, melting over my desk like warm butter. I am as dainty as a record needle, a Two Buck Chuck sommelier, sipping Pinot Noir from a mason jar. All I need is an audience, a darling little crow to knock at my window with his beak, candle flames dancing across beady black eyes –I’ll read him this poem and turn his feathers pink, orange, blue – the color of the sunset as it thaws across the sky, a celestial billboard advertising an evening well spent.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2022 24

Sophia Upshaw lives in Tallahassee, Florida. Her work has been featured in The Kudzu Review and Mistake House Magazine.

the flood

JanelleFinamore

The unhinged deck floating, it’s head Barely above water Already rotten

The tapestry of my swinging emotions washed onto marshy shore Waterlogged

I can’t even salvage your love

Your tears twist into a figure eight Snip snip

Unknot me Unfettered, liberated as

Your face skates gently towards me, power, purpose of a hungry sea lion

A moat grows around my heart. Please sift through this mess and find Heavy oars

Row to me

Janelle Finamore is a musician, poet, and teacher located in Orange County, California. Most recently, her work appeared in Sad Girls Lit, Tipton Poetry Journal, Poet Magazine, Humans of the World, A Thin Slice of Anxiety, Arlijo, Literary Heist, Route 7, Academy of the Heart&Mind, Ariel Chart, Literary Yard, Spillwords, and others. Janelle was Poet of the Month for Moon Tide Press and her fairy tale “The Girl Who Stuck Out Like a Sore Thumb” was published in Bohemia magazine. She is also an active member of various poetry workshops. Her chapbook The Power of Silly Putty and Lipstick Kisses is available on Amazon. Janelle has featured her book in poetry venues in California including The Ugly Mug and others.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2022 25

Almost Winter

BruceLevine

The air cools to an almost chill

As the remnants of fall leaves Blow across the landscape

Early morning frost on windshields Mark the days moving forward As the calendar ticks toward the winter solstice

Shortening days and longer nights Reflecting on the senses In a multitude of feelings

Winter on the horizon In the shadows of the day As the grayness of sunsets forecasts the change

At the end of the year And the harbinger of springtime Almost winter leads to the next rebirth

Bruce Levine has spent his life as a writer of fiction and poetry and as a music and theatre professional. A 2019 Pushcart Prize Poetry nominee, a 2021 Spillwords Press Awards winner, the Featured Writer in WestWard Quarterly Summer 2021 and his bio is featured in “Who’s Who of Emerging Writers 2020.” Bruce has over three hundred works published on over twenty-five on-line journals including Ariel Chart, Spillwords, The Drabble; in over seventy print books including Poetry Quarterly, Haiku Journal, Tipton Poetry Journal; Halcyon Days Founder’s Favourites (on-line and print) and his shows have been produced in New York and around the country. His work is dedicated to the loving memory of his late wife, Lydia Franklin. A native Manhattanite, Bruce now lives and writes in Maine. Visit him at www.brucelevine.com

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2022 26

The Now of Now

PaulLojeski

Between mass shootings

Trees continue to mind Their own business, While the rest of us Prepare for the worst.

No Jet Lag

PaulLojeski

Sixty-thousand miles an hour speeding around The sun. One-thousand miles an hour spinning On its axis. Yet I walk to the mailbox, as if the Ground beneath me isn’t moving at all. If that Isn’t a miracle, then I don’t know what is.

Paul Lojeski was born and raised in Lakewood, Ohio. He attended Oberlin College. His poetry has appeared online and in print. He lives in Port Jefferson, New York.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2022 27

Before Social Media

ArvillaFee

Before people showed pictures of their sandwiches, before you had to reveal every thought and feeling, before the meme wars, before all that misinformation (according to those who make such judgments), before adding friends you never knew, before cats talked and goats wore tutus, before you knew Susan was pregnant before her husband did, before you knew tweets didn’t come from birds, before you snap-insta-chatted-grammed every five minutes, before your phone sprouted like a tree branch out of your palm, before headlines were click-bait (and quite untrue), before you compared your life to Karen’s with her house and polished children and three-car garage, before you blocked people with one click you happily ate bologna, watched TV only when men landed on the moon, minded your own, fed your non-talking cat, had no idea Susan was pregnant until she was eight-months along and you ran into her at the grocery store, birds tweeted in the trees, you snapped beans and talked over the backyard fence, clutched a toddler in each hand (completely unpolished), didn’t know a single person named Karen, and blocked people with the solid slam of your front door.

Arvilla Fee teahes English Composition for Clark State College in Ohio, and is the poetry editor for the San Antonio Review. She has been published in numerous presses including Poetry Quarterly, Inwood Indiana, 50 Haikus, Contemporary Haibun Online, Drifting Sands Haibun, Teach Write, Acorn, Stone Poetry Quarterly, Bright Flash Literary Review, San Antonio Review & others. She won the Rebecca Lard Award for best poem in the Spring 2020 issue of Poetry Quarterly. Her poetry book, The Human Side, comes out in 2023.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2022 28

The Stars As They Die GeorgeFreek

In the distance the clouds pay me no mind. They exist in otherworldly time. They dissolve into night. The stars appear dismembered. They barely shed light. I can see nothing, nothing but the shadow of a make-believe blackbird, in the shadow of a make-believe tree, and the moon lowers her eyes, when she gazes at me.

George Freek is a poet/playwright living in Belvidere, Illionois. George Freek's poetry appears in numerous Journals and Reviews. His poem "Written At Blue Lake" was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize. His poem "Enigmatic Variations" was also recently nominated for Best of the Net. His collection Melancholia is published by Red Wolf Editions.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2022 29

Thinning of the Veil

MichelleHartman

A chill breeze brings whispers of crows. Natter and mumble as they leave items for brewing spells. The stag and tower cards have dominated my readings this morning. So damp the day the sage almost refused to light. Autumn sits at my table, staring at the fire she grows shorter, more guant less respected each year. It is not what you look at but what you see, she sees the world burning. Her leaves cannot fall from dead trees. We wait, she and I for the thinning of the veil. Our sisters around the world prepare. It went wrong when we taught our children to fear witches not those who burned them. When we leave we will take hope with us.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2022 30

I can write you a world

MichelleHartman

Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish ~ Euripides

I do not write what I see in your world I write what I see in mine. The cliche is that writers are introverts, not true. We have a fantastic reality, made by us for us wish not to spend time in this melting slag heap you think is still a viable abode. There is time before lunch to sit on the telephone lines read the morning paper. A great place to catch up on crow gossip, the latest news of the Fey. A skeleton has come to my door, he is peddling mirrors and clothespins. I think I can get him to stay for tea. Maybe he’ll have something to fix the frost on the carpet.

Michelle Hartman’s fourth book, Wanton Disarray, along with her other books, Disenchanted and Disgruntled, Irony and Irreverence, and The Lost Journal of my Second Trip to Purgatory, are available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Hartman’s work has appeared in over three hundred publications. She lives in Fort Worth, Texas, and is the former editor of Red River Review. She recently won the John and Miriam Morris Memorial Chapbook contest, sponsored by the Alabama State Poetry Society. Hartman holds a BS in Political Science-Pre Law from Texas Wesleyan University and a Certificate in Paralegal Studies from Tarrant County Community College. She was recently named Distinguished Alumni by TCC.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2022 31

Most Poems

MichaelLeeJohnson

Most poems are pounded out in emotional flesh, sometimes physical skin scalped feelings. It’s a Jesus hanging on a cross a Mary kneeling at the bottom not knotted in love but roped, a blade of a bowie knife heavenward. I look for the kicker line the close at the bottom seek a public poetry forum to cheer my aspirations on. I hear those far away voices carrying my life away a retreat into insanity.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2022 32

Michael Lee Johnson is an internationally published poet in 44 countries, has several published poetry books, has been nominated for 4 Pushcart Prize awards and 6 Best of the Net nominations, and has over 266 poetry videos on YouTube.

5.1 cm

CameronMorse

Diameter the length of the middle knuckle of my index finder in right frontal lobe, falling short of golf ball tumor, the standard comparison for hail so big we bring one to the freezer as a keepsake, a for the sake of. I never measured it out by the light of my iPhone before this growth is putting me out of business. My whole left arm is a power outage. Outrage consumes the tenements of my body. Pressed against a wall swiveling down the sewer drain what are they these cells that build precariously? What crawled out of the swamp? The same primordial sea spawned you and me, our machine life.

Cameron Morse is Senior Reviews editor at Harbor Review and the author of eight collections of poetry. His first collection, Fall Risk, won Glass Lyre Press’s 2018 Best Book Award. His book of unrhymed sonnets, Sonnetizer, is forthcoming from Kelsay Books. He holds an MFA from the University of Kansas City-Missouri and lives in Independence, Missouri, with his wife Lili and three children. For more information, check out his Facebook page or website.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2022 33

The Wrong Place

TawnParent

“I don’t think we’re in the right place,” my son said, looking up at the sign above the desk. “What’s oncology?” he asked. It was my turn to look up at Eli, (my tall manboy with the baby face), into those wondering hazel eyes. My tongue curled around the word, reluctant to release its awful power. Big breath. “It means cancer,” I said.

My husband came in from the parking lot and we three trooped down a hall, into a small room, without enough space to breathe, sat in hard plastic chairs, and heard from an unsmiling doctor, aggressive, unusual, large tumor, sarcoma, blood in the belly, more detailed pathology, bone marrow biopsy, bone scan, body scan, port-o-cath, clinical trials, chemotherapy, radiation, nausea, vomiting, losing hair, treatment before Christmas, no more school this year.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2022 34

“No school!” Eli exclaimed, as if that were the worst of the news. But perhaps it was the only bit he could grasp in the soup of this surreal conversation. We sat and stared, dry-eyed and numb, nodded, signed, took appointment cards into helpless hands, and slowly rose. Our legs somehow carried us from the small room, back down the hall and out of that right and wrong place into the gray afternoon.

A native of Indianapolis, Tawn Parent has been a professional writer and editor for 30 years. She has worked primarily for business publications and also served as proofreader for two books. She holds a B.A. in journalism and French from Indiana University and a master’s degree in English language acquisition from Marian University. She is working on a compilation of poems about her young son’s cancer journey.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2022 35

The god you are given MarkVogel

When I awake I shall behold my face in righteousness; I shall be satisfied with beholding thy form. ~ Rewritten Psalm 17

Hearing quiet commands coming from out and in, immersed in the breathing like a dog fat with smells, no longer in the dream, but autonomous, stuffed with free will floating in diaphanous light, welcoming the persistent newly crafted story, eyes open, the day colored with shifting window movement as if smiling for a god with dimensions I can handle, the presence arranging the in and out peace content in this now even knowing off the ridge partier pigs snort, their rations smeared on snouts as the light shifts and the shadows appear. For the god of habit whispers (again) and new boundaries appear a sentient turtle crawls like a slow meditation in the maturing sun as I rise to ablutions and breakfast, jewelweed and buttercups, all manner of explosive yellow red green. This god says: prune it, and it will grow, then rewrites again and again the one psalm so it fits. Sometimes legs fold together, waiting for the gesture that designates the correct path. Forgotten, the realm of sleep that glued tight parallel stories. In this immediacy more felt than understood, clouds swirl and light builds, and today’s gentle blowing message travels from miles away. The delight in moving, aware, is enough.

Mark Vogel lives at the back of a Blue Ridge holler with his wife, Susan Weinberg, an accomplished fiction and creative non-fiction writer, and two foster sons. He currently is an Emeritus Professor of English at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. Poems and short stories have appeared in several dozen literary journals.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2022 36

Barney Fife Finds Sweet Revenge

EugeneStevenson

Consider then the tough-guy Barney Fife, chafing second fiddle to Andy Taylor, always a deputy, object of derisive laughter even in the face of, Now I’m being serious here.

His troubles begin when he begins to think, compound as he kicks through his thoughts, manifest as he avers to be what he is not, People are going to respect me after this.

He has had to wait decades for his opportunity: black sunglasses, black equipment belt, black Kevlar vest, black Glock in the holster, black telescoping baton. Fear on the hoof.

Barney grows a swagger, hours in the gym, practices a Drop Dead scowl in the mirror, screams commands in the shower, falls in love with his ICE uniform. Sweet revenge.

Eugene Stevenson , son of immigrants, father of expatriates, lives in the Smoky Mountains of North Carolina. Eisenhower Fellow, Pushcart Prize nominee & author of The Population of Dreams (Finishing Line Press 2022), his poems have appeared in The Galway Review, The Hudson Review, San Pedro River Review, Third Wednesday, Tipton Poetry Journal & Washington Square Review among others.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2022 37

The Autistic Boy and the Hose

JohnGrey

He loved having the hose turned on him, that stream of cool liquid splashing every part of his body. It didn't even have to be a hot day.

He would reach up and try to catch to catch the water but it would slip through his fingers or slap against his palms and splatter in all directions.

He connected to that flow more than he did with people. Towel him dry and he'd be friendless.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2022 38

Sid’s Future JohnGrey

What do you want to be when you grow up? she asked the class.

Lots of doctors and lawyers. But only the one who volunteered I'm gonna sell knockoff hand-bags like my old man.

The girls spoke up with perfect pitch, The boys erupted, but gently, like bubbles on a surface.

I wanna be bugged by the cops, he continued. Where's your vendor's license? Did this stuff fall off the back of the truck?

The others were rehearsed by the homes they came from. He was engineered by visits to the big house.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident now living in Rhode Island, recently published in Sheepshead Review, Stand, Washington Square Review and Floyd County Moonshine. Latest books, Covert, Memory Outside The Head, and Guest Of Myself are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in the McNeese Review, Rathalla Review and Open Ceilings.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2022 39

Dogs May Smell God

BruceCampbell

I think dogs meditate – when you see them lying quiet, alert and attentive to every breeze, every sound –I’d add, if I could, the cast of light, but that’s more in our diet –to every sense, anyway, that they’re best evolved to use –attending to what’s concrete, most in this moment. And I think that’s where God’s still big news, right on the edge of this here right now –if anywhere, here the Tao’s most touchable. If there were and could be no other bestowment, what better than a heartfelt sense of “Wow!”? If God infuses everything, here’s where the infusion bubbles –where creation happens, where new is found.

I think dogs may smell God –that being their primary sense, it stands to reason, though it will shock some that I say so and seem to others only odd. I say this ’cause my dog seems more at peace than, on my best days, I do. And I say this because God’s there to be seen if not by us much smelt. I say this because I’m keen to know, if unsure the way to pursue, whatever it is my dog’s just felt and where, while lying still, she’s been.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2022 40

[This poem was first published in the Summer 2021 issue of The Missouri Review]

BruceCampbell

This is how I see us: God below, human above –spider above, rhino above. Fly, antelope, polar bear, trout, tiger, mantis, lemur, platypus, pterodactyl, trilobite, mosasaur, albatross also above. Individual consciousnesses down so far. Below that, tapping into – being, actually –unavoidably and irrevocably, irreversibly and unrefutably, the one consciousness we all are basically. Separate, singular, private, and seemingly complete, but only so so far.

And permeable.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2022 41

[This poem was first published in the Summer 2021 issue of The Missouri Review] Bruce Campbell is, by day, Scientific Editor at the Magee-Women’s Research Institute at the University of Pittsburgh. In the evenings, he is a sometimes composer of microtonal music.

Importance Ken Poyner

A woman has climbed over The rickety fire escape outside A building’s sixth floor window.

People begin to gather at the base Of the building. It is assumed She has some connection to the sixth floor

Window. Perhaps it leads to An apartment. Perhaps it is an office Where she works, clerical or cleaning,

Or with numbers. Her heels On the ledge of the fire escape platform, She reaches back to the rail,

Cupping it underhand and leaning In a series of acute angles forward. Below, the debate is will she fall

Or jump, or will someone at the window Step out to gather her heroically by the waist. A woman with her pre-teen son

Collects at the back of the still growing Crowd. She draws her hand over Her son’s eyes, as the woman is naked.

Ken Poyner lives in Norfolk, Virginia. This year he has published several pieces of microfiction and between twenty and thirty poems, three of which have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2022 42

In the voices of birds

NancyHuxtableMohr

he dresses for breakfast and our walk spills egg on his clean shirt more buttons again forward through the black now with white cane tapping tapping tapping outside he holds tight on my arm two steps behind me we listen for the familiar romance in the voices of birds stop, surrender our breath in imitation edges of our bodies vanish and no further sorrow possible in any form.

Nancy Huxtable

Mohr is a retired teacher. Her work explores motherhood, embodiment, the climate crisis, and nature. She lives parttime in Northern California and Upstate New York. She considers herself a farm girl although it’s been a long time since she milked a cow. Her work can be found in many journals, most recently in Cider Press Review, BeZine, Concho River Review, Avocet, Rogue Agent, and others. More of her work can be found on her website at www.nancyhuxtablemohr.org and Instagram @nancy.mohr

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2022 43

Boatman HaroLee

You are passed down the riverbed passed in fist and foot in belly and arse in unkissed scalp.

All day your breaths tip you from side to side, letting a little water into your boat, bursting a little dam between her legs.

And then, the canal splits in blood and water and they can see your crown. Welcome, love, to your first resurrection.

Your lips take her milk and she notices how the ends of your hair hold pohutukawa in full bloom. Bees carry their honey towards you.

Haro Lee is a Korean poet who teaches English in South Korea. Her work has been published and is forthcoming in Michigan Quarterly Review, Zone 3 Press, The Offing, The Indianapolis Review, The Texas Review, Anhinga Press, RHINO Poetry, Dryland Lit, and Ghost City Press, among others. She was also the recipient of Epiphany Magazine’s Breakout 8 Writers Prize.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2022 44

At Lewis and Clark Landing

KatherineHoerth

Another perfect April afternoon along the river: spring is in full bloom, the marigolds show off their amber hues in flowerboxes, patches of fresh-laid sod shimmer with an embarrassment of green. Young catalpas planted in a row along the loamy shoreline settle in ideal for their shallow roots and fragrant flowers.

A toddler races to the brand-new sandbox with a shovel in her hand. She’ll dig perhaps to China, fill her pail with earth. A swing set moans as someone breaks it in. The jungle gym, with wet paint, sits untouched.

The Missouri river lazes on through the season as it has for eons, before it had this name, before it carved this landing place of history and lead. Beneath the thin veneer of peace, what lies? A foot of clay, a superfund, the bones of the past. We’ve covered up such darkness here. We pray our children never dig too deep.

Katherine Hoerth is the author of five poetry collections, including the forthcoming Flare Stacks in Full Bloom (Texas Review Press, 2021). She is an assistant professor at Lamar University and editor of Lamar University Literary Press. Her writing interests include eco-poetry, feminism, and formalism. She is a member of the Texas Institute of Letters and lives near Houston.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2022 45

Mercy LynetteLamp

1. My husband drew the line at killing a baby mole. But those tunnels in the yard came from somewhere. He drove the mole to the woods, left it there. Crueler than any shovel, but he wasn’t the one doing the killing. Like Pontius Pilate, he washed his hands of it.

2. Something had been nesting inside our daughter’s outgrown dirt-bike boots, slumped in a dark corner insides full of paper scraps and dry pasta. The home was abandoned home when I found it, but I would have dumped the contents even if something were nestled inside.

3. Our child carefully trapped a spider in her room, freed it outside. She knew it was there for weeks, willing to share her space until it bit her on the ankle. I’ve sanctioned death for less: shit on my deck, bird body-slams on my windows. But while weeding my gardens yesterday, I tiptoed around a sleeping fawn, even though its mother ate my roses.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2022 46

Lynette Lamp is a practicing family physician and recent graduate of the Spalding University MFA program. She has had previous poems published in JAMA (Journal of American Medical Association), The Pharos, and Annals of Internal Medicine. Lynette lives in Winona, Minnesota.

The Runner AlessioZanelli

On feet of dreams the runner’s headed to land’s end. She knows the horizon keeps receding while she’s running, but she runs as though it didn’t. A finish line is not her aim.

Along the pathway time’s not measured in seconds but in paces, in fact a runner’s time and space commingle. The run will come to a stop where dreams dissolve, and dreams don’t hinge on time or space but on the run itself. Land’s end is but a moving sight, the pathway a circle.

Alessio Zanelli is an Italian poet who writes in English and whose work has appeared in over 200 literary journals from 16 countries. His fifth original collection, titled The Secret Of Archery, was published in 2019 by Greenwich Exchange Publishing (London). For more information please visit www.alessiozanelli.it.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2022 47

Less KitKennedy

Flora divides her day into three equal segments: into the sun into the fire into the tiger’s eye offering no clue why manual typewriters hold such interest nor when Flora sees a fried egg poppy, why that evening she dreams of ink nor why Flora worries when the apple falls, who will catch?

the door opens, the door closes upon interior weather all boxes accounted for, labeled, sealed soon the door opens again only to shut permanently

Kit Kennedy is a queer elder living in Walnut Creek, California. She has published 7 collections including "while eating oysters" (CLWN WR BKS, Brooklyn, NY). Work has appeared in Tipton Poetry Journal, Great Weather for Media, First Literary Review-East, Gyroscope, Glass, Muse Pie Press, among others. She serves as Poet in Residence of SF Bay Times and Resident Poet at Ebenezer Lutheran "herchurch." Please visit: http://poetrybites.blogspot.com.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2022 48

Out of Reach, Out of Touch

TiaPaul-Louis

From a clavier harmonizing Chopin and Schubert I rose –

lifted like a beam in the sky till the outrageous waves of the Pacific swallowed me and silence became a wobbly gaze.

I’ve not heard anything for days.

I can’t tell if I’m sitting or lying down as I become less sober, yet, more conscious, with my lips pressed against a shadow with no form: a shadow I sense will never leave me

like the others did. The others. The beings I’m afraid to call human. The ones who vowed rescue but set traps and fire. They won’t come anymore.

Born in the Caribbean and raised in the U.S., Tia Paul-Louis began writing songs at age 11, then experimented with poetry during high school. She earned a BA in English/Creative Writing from the University of South Florida along with a M.F.A in Creative Writing from National University in California. Her works have appeared in literary magazines such as The Voices Project, Ethos Literary Journal, and Rabbit Catastrophe Review. Some of her favorite authors and poets include Langston Hughes, Emily Dickinson, Maya Angelou and Edgar Allan Poe. Apart from writing, Paul-Louis enjoys music, photography, acting and cooking, though she mostly finds herself and others through poetry.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2022 49

Curl RuthHolzer

The lock of light brown hair that he kept in his wallet, pressed in tissue paper, that he’d look at now and then with renewed pleasure, my curl of silken newborn hair, I placed beneath his folded hands, one thing he could take with him, after all.

Ruth Holzer lives in Virginia and is the author of eight chapbooks, most recently, Living in Laconia (Gyroscope Press) and Among the Missing (Kelsay Books). Her poems have appeared in Blue Unicorn, Faultline, Slant, Poet Lore, Connecticut River Review and Plainsongs, among other journals and anthologies. She has received several Pushcart Prize nominations.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2022 50

Spear-child SaraswatiNagpal

Before I grew ears, was your voice shiver on ectoderm dawn in amniotic sky silk in placental dream that split

I slithered out, the world a bright fuzz your cries red with love and blood I heard

True North, your voice was starlight fire, river, sun fed my bones, your words grew me, grew inside me like fire-seeds, and I became a forest of thunder, lightning in my tongue.

Saraswati Nagpal is an Indian writer and poet, a lover of fantasy and sci-fi. Her graphic novels 'Sita, Daughter of the Earth' and 'Draupadi, the Fire-born Princess' are retellings of epic Indian myths in the female voice. Her poetry has appeared in Cathexis Northwest Press and The Journal of Radical Wonder. She is also a classical dancer who choreographs and performs for film and stage. When she isn't writing, she attempts to inspire teenagers by teaching literature. Twitter: @SaraswatiNagpal / Insta: @saraswatinagpal

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2022 51

Fall

BrandonHansen

despite harvest moon today the sun’s gone postal. you burn and catch red leaves, and I’m reminded that falling is an occasion for grace.

Brandon Hansen is from a village in northern Wisconsin. He studied writing along Lake Superior, and then trekked out to the mountains, where he earned his MFA as a Truman Capote scholar at the University of Montana. His work has been Pushcart Nominated, and can be found in The Baltimore Review, Quarterly West, Puerto Del Sol, and elsewhere. Find him on Twitter: @BatBrandon_

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2022 52

Editor

Barry Harris is editor of the Tipton Poetry Journal and four anthologies by Brick Street Poetry: Mapping the Muse: A Bicentennial Look at Indiana Poetry; Words and Other Wild Things and Cowboys & Cocktails:Poems from the True Grit Saloon, and Reflections on Little Eagle Creek. He has published one poetry collection, Something At The Center.

Married and father of two grown sons, Barry lives in Brownsburg, Indiana and is retired from Eli Lilly and Company.

His poetry has appeared in Kentucky Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Grey Sparrow, Silk Road Review, Saint Ann‘s Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Boston Literary Magazine, Night Train, Silver Birch Press, Flying Island, Awaken Consciousness, Writers‘ Bloc, Red-Headed Stepchild and Laureate: The Literary Journal of Arts for Lawrence. One of his poems was on display at the National Museum of Sport and another is painted on a barn in Boone County, Indiana as part of Brick Street Poetry‘s Word Hunger public art project. His poems are also included in these anthologies: From the Edge of the Prairie; Motif 3: All the Livelong Day; and Twin Muses: Art and Poetry.

He graduated a long time ago with a major in English from Ball State University.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2022 53

Review: Ticker by Mark Neely ReviewedbyBarryHarris

Title: Ticker

Author: Mark Neely Year:

2021

Publisher: Lost Horse Press

Ticker is a unique book of poems centered around a central character, Bruce. Ticker was the winner of the Idaho Prize for Poetry in 2020. Each poem is either about Bruce, about things happening to or centered around Bruce’s life, or what Bruce is doing or thinking when events occur in the world we share with Bruce.

So who is Bruce and just what is ticking?

In “The Economy Stupid,” Bruce is:

Like a Taco Bell built on the site of a desecrated burial mound, . . . it’s so easy being Bruce. He’s open late. He lets anybody in.

Most poems in the book are third person observational poems. There are also several poems, either in the first person, where Bruce takes jittery control of the narrative, or second person, where some essential part of Bruce seems to be urging poor Bruce to awake. These inner dialogue poems all include the word Subvocal in the title. The dictionary defines subvocal as an “unarticulated level of speech, comparable to thought.”

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2022 54

These subvocal poems delve more deeply into Bruce’s inner thoughts. For example, the first poem in the book is titled “Subvocal (Challenger)”:

The poem opens with references to a specific period of time. For those too young to remember January 28, 1986 (the day the Space Shuttle Challenger broke apart killing all seven crew members) Neely paints a picture of what else was going on in or around this time:

Age of Achille Lauro and Rainbow Warrior, of Mad Max and the doddering gipper, of plaid-clad women and mustachioed men tossing villains through plate glass. Of Jan Hammer, Desperately Seeking Susan, “Easy Lover,” of Gorbachev with his skull cracked open.

Age of Sweetness and the Refrigerator. Age of I love it when a plan comes together.

To save readers from googling any of these references you might have either long ago forgotten or not yet stumbled across, here is a quick synopsis. The Achille Lauro was an Italian ocean liner hijacked off the coast of Egypt by the Palestine Liberation Front. The Rainbow Warrior was the flagship of the Greenpeace fleet bombed and sunk by French intelligence agents. Mad Max was a series of Australian dystopian action films. The doddering gipper was Ronald Reagan. Jan Hammer wrote the theme song for the 1980s tv show Miami Vice. Desperately Seeking Susan was Madonna’s first major movie. Mikhail Gorbachev was the last leader of the Soviet Union. Sweetness and the Refrigerator were Chicago Bears players Walter Payton and William “The Refrigerator” Perry. Hannibal Smith’s catchphrase on the tv show A-Team was “I love it when a plan comes together.”

So all this had been going on when Bruce tells us this:

And the jittery schoolroom television where I watched the launch become a strange white praying mantis in the sky. Obviously a major malfunction. . .

Who could have imagined all the stupid years to come, the wreckage falling toward the ocean surface of the suffocating dark.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2022 55

“Subvocal (Challenger)” opens the book with a bang, introducing us to the life and thoughts of a teenage Bruce facing all the stupid years to come. Beginning with the poem “Oof,” we begin to learn some gauzy details of Bruce’s life. He is married to Annie. He appears to have an unnamed exwife; Bruce and Annie have lost an unborn child and later have other children, although only Bruce Jr. is named explicitly. There is a hint of a daughter (“Soon yr own / daughter will be hooted at by terrible / sad men”).

“Oof” is about getting older:

A flurry of marriages, births. Then pause the generation wringing itself out. Welcome to the long trough of middle age, where our hero flinches

as he bends to tie his shoe. Annie says you know you’re getting old if you pull yourself from the car with an involuntary oof.

Bruce makes such noises all the livelong day, an orchestra of grunts and rumbles led by a sadist with a bent baton.

Now that you have read that last stanza, feel free to glance back at the cover photo for an apt visual. The poem ends when Bruce is in a grocery checkout line gazing a few seconds too long at the young “tattooed, crimson-lipped checker.”

Have a nice day, she says, then catches his delinquent glance and adds a cruel, Sir, and a pitiless smirk. Poor Bruce, he isn’t sure what happened. Gone from suitor to lecher in a wink. And really, he’s no dirtier than before.

In “Unborn Elegy,” we learn about Bruce and Annie’s unborn son. . . . It’s strange how Bruce misses him this boy he’s never met except as a kick in Annie’s belly, this biohazard bag thrown out with the bloody needles this notion falling through him like a stone.

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Bruce seems to both love and need Annie. In “Two by Two” we learn that

Bruce doesn’t have much to say about Annie. He forgets he’s lucky. Forgets she’s smarter, works harder, makes less money . . .

And all the days she holds his melancholy like a wet, wild animal, so he can be happy.

It is tempting to see Bruce as a symbolic Everyman. But an Everyman roiled from decades of struggling like a modern Sisyphus against an unforgiving, unrelenting system. Yet, Bruce appears to want to have faith, to believe.

In “Bruce’s Faith,” we hear that:

The secret is to be looking forward to something beyond Friday night the Sunday long run or sitting in a pew to pray away two thousand bloody years.

In “Intelligent Design,” Bruce entertains this fantasy:

He thinks he made the universe somehow scattered stars, decided if the trees would leaf or needle, dressed the beetle in medieval armor.

It’s not out of the question. After he bruned a moon-sized hole in the ozone, razed the Amazon, turned the endless plains into a pile of bison skulls.

It took seven days. It took seven billion years.

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If Bruce is an Everyman, the image conjured in “Totem” seems to cleverly suggest this.

Bruce takes a swig then passes the bottle to the Bruce below and then again . . .

Bruce thinks he’ll find the real Bruce down there, the brave big-hearted Bruce who will lead the rest of them to victory. . . but Bruce knows it’s no use. There are nothing but desparate Bruces all the way down.

Bruce gives himself a pep talk in “Subvocal (Jefferson Airplane)” within a poem set at Woodstock with a Grace Slick soundtrack.

Let’s get going Bruce! Let’s get Catullan, Cassanovian, Kenndy-esque. Make those fuckers wish they still had bodies. It’s time to blow this awful subcommittee and take a few more dizzy spins around the sun before yr staring through six feet of Illinois, an inch of cake makeup on yr face.

Are you listening? Bruce, are you awake?

Now that you are acquainted Bruce, you might be curious about the book title, Ticker. There are hints. One hint is the symbolism of a ticker tape parade, suggested by “View From the Highwire”:

Saga in ticker tape with no occasion for parading, Bruce’s stock is taking a dive, his shares brought low. . .

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The crowd prefers a dive, Bruce swanning toward the sidewalk in the tortured pose of a body just before it becomes

a corpse. . . All that’s left is the idiot mayor processing down Fourth Avenue below the jingoistic clouds as strips of paper spiral in the breeze. . . wrapping Bruce’s body so he can be born again.

But the smart money is on the heart as a beating force. Bruce’s heart. He tells us himself in “Subvocal (Life Support)”:

Hook me up to everything you’ve got, . . . Sew in pig valves, spry and spongy, a pair of stout bull’s balls if that’s the way it has to be.

. . . as long as sunlight rattles through the blinds to shine on Annie, fierce behind a veil of dust, you keep that pig heart pumping in my chest.

And again in “Subvocal (Ticker)” we detect the constant pulse of a beating heart, or is it the beeping of a hospital monitor or a grocery scanner.

Bleep bleep Bruce. Bleep bleep the cornflakes in the scanner beam.

Bleep bleep the birds, the 6:00 a.m. alarm. Bleep bleep

the words you think but never say. Wake up! It’s garbage day . . .

It’s time to bleep! Time to get to work.

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Mark Neely has written a tight, blunt, humorous and sad picture of Bruce and what Bruce represents perhaps a world increasingly running us down as we strive to find meaning in lives beset by the ticking monotony of an empty culture built on consumerism and mendacity.

Mark Neely is the author of Beasts of the Hill and Dirty Bomb, both from Oberlin College Press. His third book, Ticker,won the Idaho Prize for Poetry and was published by Lost Horse Press in 2021. His awards include an NEA Poetry Fellowship, an Indiana Individual Artist grant, the FIELD Poetry Prize, and the Concrete Wolf Press chapbook award for Four of a Kind. He is a professor of English at Ball State University and a senior editor at River Teeth: a Journal of Nonfiction Narrative.

Barry Harris is editor of the Tipton Poetry Journal and four anthologies by Brick Street Poetry. He has published one poetry collection, Something At The Center.

Married and father of two grown sons, Barry lives in Brownsburg, Indiana and is retired from Eli Lilly and Company.

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Tipton Poetry

Contributor Biographies

Bruce Campbell is, by day, Scientific Editor at the Magee-Women’s Research Institute at the University of Pittsburgh. In the evenings, he is a sometimes composer of microtonal music.

After 34 years with Eli Lilly and Company, Brendan Crowley set up his own consulting and executive coaching business, Brendan Crowley Advisors LLC. He helps executives grow in their roles and careers. Brendan is originally from Ireland and lives with his wife Rosaleen in Zionsville, Indiana. He has a passion for photography and loves taking photographs of his home country, Ireland, and here in Indiana.

A nine time Pushcart nominee in both prose and poetry, Liz Dolan has published two poetry collections. Her ten grandchildren pepper her life. Liz lives in Rehobeth Beach, Delaware.

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Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2022

Kit Kennedy is a queer elder living in Walnut Creek, California. She has published 7 collections including "while eating oysters" (CLWN WR BKS, Brooklyn, NY). Work has appeared in Tipton Poetry Journal, Great Weather for Media, First Literary ReviewEast, Gyroscope, Glass, Muse Pie Press, among others. She serves as Poet in Residence of SF Bay Times and Resident Poet at Ebenezer Lutheran "herchurch." Please visit: http://poetrybites.blogspot.com.

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Paul Lojeski was born and raised in Lakewood, Ohio. He attended Oberlin College. His poetry has appeared online and in print. He lives in Port Jefferson, New York. Poet and filmmaker

Dave Malone lives in the Missouri Ozarks. His latest poetry volume is Tornado Drill (Aldrich Press, 2022), and his poems have appeared in Plainsongs, San Pedro River Review, and Delta Poetry Review. He can be found online at davemalone.net or via Instagram @dave.malone.

Karla Linn Merrifield lives in Florida and has 16 books to her credit. Her newest poetry collection, My Body the Guitar, recently nominated for the National Book Award, was inspired by famous guitarists and their guitars and published in December 2021 by Before Your Quiet Eyes Publications Holograph Series (Rochester, NY). She is a frequent contributor to The Songs of Eretz Poetry Review. Web site: https://www.karlalinnmerrifield.org/; blog at https://karlalinnmerrifeld.wordpress.com/; Tweet @LinnMerrifiel; https://www.facebook.com/karlalinn.merrifield.

Nancy Huxtable Mohr is a retired teacher. Her work explores motherhood, embodiment, the climate crisis, and nature. She lives part-time in Northern California and Upstate New York. She considers herself a farm girl although it’s been a long time since she milked a cow. Her work can be found in many journals, most recently in Cider Press Review, BeZine, Concho River Review, Avocet, Rogue Agent, and others. More of her work can be found on her website at www.nancyhuxtablemohr.org and Instagram @nancy.mohr

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Poetry

Ken Poyner lives in Norfolk, Virginia. This year he has published several pieces of microfiction and between twenty and thirty poems, three of which have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

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Gene Twaronite is the author of four collections of poetry as well as the rhyming picture book How to Eat Breakfast. His first poetry book Trash Picker on Mars, published by Kelsay Books, was the winner of the 2017 New Mexico-Arizona Book Award for Arizona poetry. His newest poetry collection Shopping Cart Dreams will be published by Kelsay Books in 2022. Gene’s poems have been described as: “ranging from edgy to whimsical to inscrutable … playfully haunting and hauntingly playful.” A former New Englander, Gene now lives in Tucson. Follow more of his poetry at genetwaronite.poet.com or https://www.instagram.com/genetwaronitepoetry/.

Sophia Upshaw lives in Tallahassee, Florida. Her work has been featured in The Kudzu Review and Mistake House Magazine.

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Editor

Married and father of two grown sons, Barry lives in Brownsburg, Indiana and is retired from Eli Lilly and Company.

He graduated a long time ago with a major in English from Ball State University.

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